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Thoughts on Assignment 1 -Deliverable 5 (Paper Prototyping)

I am increasingly amazed by the mind games that my mind plays on me in my quest to be creative and get work done. I have had this assignment for a week now. I had a “vision” of how I was to scrawl out out my “5 tasks” on my notebook pages since class on Thursday, but kept putting it off.

My plan was to get it all done on Tuesday, when I had at least half of the day free to work it. Tuesday night: nothing. But I knew I was not going to have to work on Wednesday (because of the “snow”) so I was not panicking. Wednesday afternoon: nothing. What is it with me?

I will work that out someday but the point of this is that I eventually got started and once I did I could not stop. What struck me about this process was how creative it was and how much of the right side of my brain was truly required. I found myself reliving the exercises that we did in the 710 design class and even found myself working a simple, makeshift, but real grid as I scrawled. I was struck as well about how design “revealed” itself to me as I would scrawl. I would put something down on paper, then realize, “No. That will never work!”

The whole process was really cool and I left it felling very confident that I had something of value of offer my test subject next week. Somewhere, deep inside, I must have realized that creativity was required and when I am under a lot of pressure and have a lot of deadlines for a lot of projects, I think my mind tends me toward the “mindless” tasks so as to not overload me. That was the source of my resistance. I need to be more aware as we continue of this “creativity trap” as we progress with further assignments. Off to take pictures of my scrawl.

Addendum:
After taken pictures of my scrawls, I have come to the conclusion that showing my work by taking pictures of my scrawls is a pain! I either have to take pictures of every single sheet for readability or take a picture of each task as a process for context. To get readability you lose context. To get context you lose readability. I did a similar assignment in my presentation theory class where I asked the students to take pictures of the sticky notes or 3×5 “brainstorming cards. Big mistake! I will have to come up with a better delivery methodology for the Fall.